Open access ‘excludes’ developing world scientists

Pay-to-publish models adopted by science journals ‘exacerbate the exclusion of researchers from the global South’.

Open access publishing is excluding many developing world scientists as complex fee waiver systems fall short, say leading researchers.

The models, which make research free to read by charging authors to publish their work, have been promoted by funders as a way to give more people access to scientific research.

The European Union’sPlan Sdemands that, as of 2021, the results of publicly funded research must be published in open access journals or open repositories. The prestigious scientific publisher Springer Nature recently宣布it will join the movement.

“Most publishers have good waiver policies, but they are not always clearly explained or consistent, so researchers even sometimes end up paying APCs from their own pocket.”

安德里亚·鲍威尔拓展director and publisher coordinator of the Research4Life initiative

Yet for many researchers in the developing world, who do not have a grant or an institution to cover the fees, the open access system can lock them out of top tier academic journals.

Bonaventure Tetanye Ekoe, honorary dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon, says the open access model means African researchers are penalised twice.

“The first time they are penalised because there is no money to fund their research. A second time because even when they manage to do their research, they are asked to pay to publish a paper.
他告诉SciDev.Net.

提交论文的成本可能是研究人员的薪水。例如，喀麦隆一名博士学位助理研究员的每月薪水估计超过350美元。

The initial cost of submitting a paper to Nature for editorial assessment under theguided open access型号为2,690美元，而喀麦隆的博士助理研究员的每月薪水估计超过350美元。

From January, Nature is trialling the guided open access model as a pilot for自然物理，自然遗传学和自然方法.

AtPLOS journals，费用从约800美元开始，可以达到4,000美元，而The Lancetcharges an article processing fee of up to US$5,000 for gold open access — which makes final versions of articles freely and permanently accessible while authors retain copyright.

增加差距

Mohamed Hashem, head of the National Research Centre in Egypt, believes that imposing fees to publish research would increase the burden on researchers in low- and middle-income countries as they search for less prestigious journals to publish in.

“The size of the gap in scientific publishing between the developing and the developed countries will increase,” says Hashem.

他说，中东和北非地区的研究机构通常会为研究人员发表工作提供奖金，但是这些奖金的价值可能会有所不同。

“In Egypt we consider several criteria in determining the value of the reward, including the value of the journal, the importance of the research and the value of the results concluded in the research,” Hashem says.

Halima Benbouza, founder of Algeria’s National Biotechnology Research Centre, also says publishing fees will greatly affect researchers in the region, especially with the weak funding allocated to cover publishing costs.

“In Algeria, the Directorate General for Scientific Research and Technological Development funds the costs of publishing in scientific journals, including Nature, and encourages that, but if sufficient funds will not be available, this will inevitably affect the presence of the work of researchers from our region in the high indexed peer-reviewed scientific journals,” says Benbouza.

她补充说：“我们发展中国家的研究人员通常在必​​须在享有声望的期刊上发表收取高昂的费用，或在较少或没有费用的好期刊上发表的著名期刊，但要长期等待获得回应，从而延迟出版。”

Waiver weakness

研究人员说，即使许多期刊都有豁免系统的豁免系统，但由于没有很好的理解，这通常是没有用的。

根据科学家族出版商Bill Moran的说法，2020年，由美国科学进步协会（AAAS）出版的科学进步的36％的作者出版了。期刊。

包括自然投资组合期刊的Springer Nature还具有豁免系统。

“Springer Nature publishes almost 600 journals that are completely open access and have APC waiver and discount policies for authors in financial need,” says Jessica Monaghan, head of policy and performance in the open access team at Springer Nature.

“Last year alone we waived over €13.5 million (US$16.3 million) worth of APCs,” Monaghan says.

However, scientists from the global South say they are not always successful in securing waivers from journals with processing fees.

里约热内卢联邦大学的查加斯病研究员佩德罗·拉格布拉德（Pedro Lagerblad）有两篇论文。Frontiers in Physiology并收到每张纸2,950美元的发票。申请豁免后，他获得了50％的特许权。

他告诉他说：“在生物化学中，大多数期刊收取费用，但在巴西，科学资金已大大减少。”SciDev.Net.

安德里亚·鲍威尔拓展director and publisher coordinator of the Research4Life initiative, says the waiver system is hampered by internal bureaucracy and lack of support for researchers from their institutions.

Powell says another issue is the lack of clarity on how the waiver system works.

“Publishers are not deliberately making the application process difficult to understand, but they do not always appreciate how the system works from the end-user’s point of view,” she toldSciDev.Net.

“Most publishers have good waiver policies, but they are not always clearly explained or consistent, so researchers even sometimes end up paying APCs from their own pocket.

“Ultimately, the result is that scholars in many lower- and middle-income countries do not submit their work to Open Access journals because [by doing so] they can avoid any question of paying a fee to publish.”

This article was produced by SciDev.Net’s Latin America and Caribbean desk.